If WT Bryant isn’t working with his hands, he says his world just doesn’t feel right. It’s that maker spirit that’s led him to reimagine objects like the cigar box. For nearly four years, Bryant has ...

ST. JOSEPH, Mo. (AP) - It started as a search for a different sound. Kevin M. Kraft spent years unsatisfied with the instruments he had and was considering commissioning a custom-made guitar when he ...

HUNTSVILLE, AL. - What is a cigar box guitar? Technically, it’s a discarded cigar box with a hole for a 1-inch-by-2-inch fretboard. A hodgepodge of random items. Perhaps with a leather cord attached ...

It sounds raw. It doesn’t sound like a nice guitar when you pick it up and strum it. It sounds different, unrefined. “You’re talking about a stick with strings on it, and a box wrapped around a stick, ...

LIVERMORE — Ed Roudebush heard something different in a song that didn’t quite sound like a guitar, but wasn’t a banjo either. After some research, he found the cigar box guitar, and now months later ...

A cigar box is just a cigar box — except when it's a guitar. In the hands of Gipson Shoemaker III, the simple wooden box becomes a musical instrument worth hundreds of dollars and capable of producing ...

Homemade instruments emerged in 1930s, when people couldn't afford "real" instruments Modern revival fits in with DIY culture He works with the precision and concentration of a surgeon because, well, ...

Shane Speal, whose Snake Oil Band headlines the first New Orleans Cigar Box Guitar Festival on Saturday, started out playing something with a little more firepower. “In the ’80s, I was a bass player ...